Customer data backlash looms large

Companies must stop burying their heads in the sand and prepare for the end of the “golden age” of customer data as consumers wake up to the value of their own personal information and become increasingly reluctant to hand it over.
That is just one of the key findings of a new report Ernst & Young, which shows that nearly half of the consumers surveyed (49%) plan to restrict access to their data by 2018, while 55% already offer less personal information than five years ago.
The supply of data by businesses to third parties is also a concern for consumers, with three quarters never happy for their data to be shared. The report cites security of sensitive information following a number of high-profile cyber attacks as being a major factor.
And “The Big Data Backlash” report shows just how much of a threat this new era of restricted access will be. Almost two-thirds (62%) of businesses surveyed said they implement ‘customer insight’ programmes to collect and interpret customer information to drive business growth, and 87% of these claim to see revenues increase as a result.
However, despite this reliance, the vast majority of businesses (71%) remain unconcerned about the prospect of restricted access to customer information.
Ernst & Young partner Patrick James said businesses need to prepare for changes in how they capture information about their customers, implementing strategies such as gamification and other incentives to ensure that they are not cut off from this resource in future.
“It is one of the challenges of the digital world that a lot of organisations will quite happily continue as they are and then in five years the world will have changed, new legislation will have come in and consumer behaviour will have changed,” he said.
“We see the velocity of change is increasingly, and therefore there is the possibility that organisations will get left behind. It not an immediate challenge for tomorrow but is part of building your strategy for the next five years.”